A trio of Chinese techies have proposed a new IETF standard to enable governments to break up the Domain Name System along national borders.

Named “DNS Extension for Autonomous Internet (AIP)”, the spec describes a way to operate alternate DNS root servers within national boundaries using gateways for translation.

For internet users subscribed to one of these “AIP” networks, DNS requests would carry an extra TLD, such as .a or .b, to flag the fact that the requests are headed for an alternate root:

Domain node “www.yahoo.com” in network B is expressed as “www.yahoo.com.B” for its external domain name.

Written in broken English, the Internet Draft is a poorly masked description of a way to install government censorship via officially sanctioned domain name system Balkanization.

It appears to be designed to enable governments to cut ICANN and the authoritative DNS root out of the picture entirely in favor of a national peering system more akin to traditional telecoms networks.

In order to realize the transition from Internet to Autonomous Internet, each partition of current Internet should first realize possible self-government and gradually reduce its dependence on the foreign domain names, such as COM, NET et al.

…

It is not likely the whole Internet can be transformed synchronally in one time. In order not to affect existing domain name resolution before the Internet core part transforms into an AIP network, any country can set up an AIP DNS independently and connect to the Internet through the original link; or any two countries in agreement can set up their AIP networks and connect to each others.

The paper was written by Yuping Diao of Guangdong Commercial College, Yongping Diao of China Telecom and Ming Liao of China Mobile.

It’s just an Internet Draft at this stage, and probably nothing to get too worked up about, but it does reflect the Bigger Picture framing the ICANN expansion of the DNS.

During the ITU’s World Conference on International Telecommunications this December, backwards governments are expected to proposed a greater degree of government control over the internet.

Comments (3)

Soon or later, Asia will go much farther than this and invent its own Internet.

Most ICANN publications to participate in the Internet governance are done in English, then come other languages. English speakers have always had the advantage. This reason is good enough to drop it or…invent something different.

It is almost impossible for a non English speaker to follow ICANN’s Internet governance in general and/or have the same level of participation.